Hard disk manufacturer Western Digital (WD) has announced it to repackage the consumer version of its VelociRaptor serial ATA (SATA) 3.5in hard drives, in a 2.5in form factor. The resulting drive will be aimed at the enterprise blade and low-end rack server markets.

Although large arrays of relatively inexpensive SATA drives are used by many enterprise storage providers, the serial attached SCSI (SAS) drive is the one normally seen by enterprises as giving better performance when disk access is needed 24/7

WD's new SATA package has an estimated mean time between failure (MTBF) of 1.4 million hours said WD's enterprise storage solutions business unit general manager Tom McDorman. "In the server market, demand for high-performance drives continues to shift from the 3.5" form factor to the enterprise 2.5" form factor.”

The enterprise VelociRaptor drive comes in 150GB or 300GB versions, runs at 10,000 rpm and has a 3Gbit/s SATA interface, giving a sustained data transfer speed of 126MB/s. The VelociRaptor also comes with what WD call Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) technology, for optimising drive performance in multi-drive chassis, prone to vibration.